freeman3 wrote:And what does it matter what he says? He might even believe it but it's not relevant. He just became chairman after the previous chairman--Chaffee--decided to retire. He's going to give up an important, powerful position he just got? No way. Unless...he's not going to have it any longer...

Blue Wave 2018!!!

Whatever. Don't believe anyone but your own opinions.

Had Gowdy been the Chairman (read carefully, please) of any committee before Oversight?

No.

And, he explains in the interview why he doesn't like it.

Again, don't believe anyone but yourself. Everyone's lying except you and those who agree with you.

“It appears the FBI relied on admittedly uncorroborated information, funded by and obtained for Secretary Clinton’s presidential campaign, in order to conduct surveillance of an associate of the opposing presidential candidate. It did so based on Mr. Steele’s personal credibility and presumably having faith in his process of obtaining the information. But there is substantial evidence suggesting that Mr. Steele materially misled the FBI about a key aspect of his dossier efforts, one which bears on his credibility,” Sens. Graham and Grassley wrote.

The letter describes a verification effort before the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) so inadequate it resembles a concerted effort to conceal information from the court. However, the senators blame Steele’s “apparent deception” for Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) failures by FBI and Justice, and refer Steele for investigation of violating federal law regarding making false statements to the U.S. government. The letter also reveals Clinton associates were feeding Steele allegations that he used in his reports.

Last week’s memo from the House Intelligence Committee reported:

A salacious and unverified dossier formed an essential part of the application to secure a warrant against a Trump campaign affiliate named Carter Page. This application failed to reveal that the dossier was bought and paid for by Hillary Clinton and the Democratic National Committee.The application presented a Yahoo News article as corroboration for the dossier, when in fact it was sourced to the dossier’s author Christopher Steele.The wife of a high-ranking Justice Department official also worked on behalf of the Clinton campaign effort, and her husband Bruce Ohr funneled her research into the Department of Justice. Although he admitted that Steele “was desperate that Donald Trump not get elected and was passionate about him not being president,” this and the Ohrs’ relationship with the Clinton campaign was concealed from the secret court that grants surveillance warrants.The dossier was “only minimally corroborated” and unverified, according to FBI officials.Evidence supporting all of these claims is included in a less redacted version of the senators’ January 4, 2018, referral made publicly available late Tuesday evening. A highly redacted version of the referral was made publicly available the previous day, causing Grassley to ask the FBI to aim for more transparency. The FBI had previously attempted to keep the public from learning details of its relationship with Steele, leading Grassley to publicly decry a “bureaucratic game of hide the ball” by the FBI and DOJ.

According to the senators, the FBI relied on dossier author Steele’s alleged credibility — as opposed to corroboration or verification of his salacious and improbable claims — for the initial warrant application and its three renewals. The application also mentioned a Yahoo News article, but not only didn’t mention the article was sourced to an anonymous Steele, it positively claimed it wasn’t.

Reporter Michael Isikoff recently confirmed that Steele was obviously his source for the article, and that Clinton’s Russia dossier project head Glenn Simpson of Fusion GPS was a longtime friend. The FBI stated to the court that Steele had nothing to do with the article. Shopping his unverified allegations to the media was contrary to Steele’s agreement with the FBI. Even after Steele publicly testified about his many media contacts, the FBI hid that part of his dossier operation from the court and continued to rely on his credibility for surveillance reauthorization. http://thefederalist.com/2018/02/07/new ... isa-abuse/

The key question in the Nunes memo was how much, exactly, did the FBI rely on the Steele dossier in its FISA application to surveil Carter Page. Did they treat the dossier as a lead, something that they needed to investigate themselves, or did they treat it as evidence, something to be laid in front of the Court as credible information in and of itself that probable cause existed to believe Page was a foreign agent? There’s nothing wrong with the cops following a lead to build their own case, even if the source it comes from has a bias. But gaining a warrant based largely on that source’s work product? Surely the Fourth Amendment demands more than that.

The Nunes memo was cagey about how heavily the dossier factored into the FISA application. Grassley/Graham is less cagey. Answer: Heavily.

If you are loud enough, and believe it in your heart, maybe your wish will come true.

Also big news is the core allegation of the document, that Christopher Steele lied to someone about whether he was quietly whispering to the media in the fall of 2016 about what his sources were telling him. He told the FBI that he wasn’t in direct contact with any media, but in 2017 he admitted to a London court that he had been in contact with the press. Did he lie to the court or did he lie to the FBI? If, as James Comey once told Congress, the FBI felt comfortable relying on Steele’s information because he’d proved to be a credible source in the past, how can they continue to claim that the original FISA application was proper now that they know that he wasn’t so credible? He was a liar!

The FBI would counter, I assume, that there was no deliberate misconduct on their part. They were misled by Steele, and once they found out in late 2016 that he was in fact chattering to the media about the dossier, they ended their relationship with him. They got burned and they booted Steele because of it. Which is nice, but (a) that doesn’t solve the problem that the original FISA application against Page evidently relied “heavily” on information passed from a not-very-credible foreign agent and (b) that doesn’t explain why the Bureau allegedly failed to tell the FISA Court in later applications to renew their surveillance of Page that Steele’s info maybe hadn’t been so credible.

There is a world of difference between something that "is" and something that "appears". They are the ones that carefully used the word "appears", not me. Basically they are acknowledging that they don't really know. So since they don't know if the FBI relied principally on the Steele dossier...then we don't know.

freeman3 wrote:There is a world of difference between something that "is" and something that "appears". They are the ones that carefully used the word "appears", not me. Basically they are acknowledging that they don't really know. So since they don't know if the FBI relied principally on the Steele dossier...then we don't know.

Lawyers avoid wishy-washy words like "seems" and "appears" and "apparently" because they basically say there are known unknowns (or some kind of unknown) and in this case Lindsay Graham and Grassley are saying that in case those known unknowns (i.e, the FISA filings) contradict what they are saying...then they have covered themselves by saying "appears".

freeman3 wrote:Lawyers avoid wishy-washy words like "seems" and "appears" and "apparently" because they basically say there are known unknowns (or some kind of unknown) and in this case Lindsay Graham and Grassley are saying that in case those known unknowns (i.e, the FISA filings) contradict what they are saying...then they have covered themselves by saying "appears".

I agree with this characterization. However, your previous efforts made it seem they are uninformed. They are not.

freeman3 wrote:There is a world of difference between something that "is" and something that "appears". They are the ones that carefully used the word "appears", not me. Basically they are acknowledging that they don't really know. So since they don't know if the FBI relied principally on the Steele dossier...then we don't know.

freeman3 wrote:There is a world of difference between something that "is" and something that "appears". They are the ones that carefully used the word "appears", not me. Basically they are acknowledging that they don't really know. So since they don't know if the FBI relied principally on the Steele dossier...then we don't know.

Uh-huh.

Still hoping for a recount that makes Clinton President?

Yes.

Sorry, not sorry.

I'm only hoping that we'll get a good look at the seedy underbelly of our government during the Trump years. There is a lot of room for improvement.

I don't want to derail things further, but the current budget deal is ridiculous. Apparently, we're just going to keep spending money like we are never going to have to pay interest on it.

After further review by the FBI at Senator Grassley’s request, a less redacted version of the memo was released on Tuesday evening.

We are inundated with information, misinformation, disinformation and lies in the matter of alleged Russian collusion with the Trump campaign The less redacted version of the Grassley referral memo is an important document. It sheds some light on dark corners. . . .

[T]he Grassley-Graham referral makes public for the first time actual text from the FBI’s FISA application, as well as classified testimony the FBI gave the Senate Judiciary Committee about the dossier and FISA application.

In particular, the referral rebuts the Democratic claim that the FBI told the FISA court about the partisan nature of the Steele dossier. “The FBI noted to a vaguely limited extent the political origins of the dossier,” says the letter. And “the FBI stated that the dossier information was compiled pursuant to the direction of a law firm who had hired an ‘identified U.S. person’—now known as Glenn Simpson of Fusion GPS,” the firm that hired Mr. Steele.

But, adds the referral letter, “the application failed to disclose that the identities of Mr. Simpson’s ultimate clients were the Clinton campaign and the DNC [Democratic National Committee].” That’s not being honest with the judges who sign off on an eavesdrop order.

The referral also confirms the House memo’s finding that the FBI “relied heavily” on Mr. Steele’s dossier claims, as well as on a Yahoo News article for which Mr. Steele was the main source. And the letter notes that “the application appears to contain no additional information corroborating the dossier allegations against Mr. Page.”

James Comey, who was running the FBI at the time of the FISA fiasco, told the Senate Judiciary Committee as much in March 2017. According to the referral, when Mr. Comey was asked “why the FBI relied on the dossier in the FISA applications absent meaningful corroboration,” he said this was “because Mr. Steele himself was considered reliable due to his past work with the Bureau.”

In other words, the FBI rested its wiretap application on the credibility of a source who was working at the direction of the Clinton campaign. The FBI also seems to have closed its eyes to evidence that Mr. Steele wasn’t honest. The FBI acknowledges that it told Mr. Steele not to speak to the media about the dossier. Yet in September 2016 the ex-British spy briefed reporters about the FBI’s investigation and the dossier, which resulted in the Yahoo News article. The Clinton campaign cited that article on TV and social media to attack the Trump campaign. This was about a month prior to the FBI filing its first FISA application.

Yet the FBI’s October application told the FISA court that, “The FBI does not believe that [Steele] directly provided this information to the press.” Whether Mr. Steele lied to the FBI, or the FBI was too incompetent to verify that he was the source of the Yahoo News story, the result is the same: The FISA court issued a surveillance order on the basis of false information about the credibility of the FBI’s main source.

Even after Mr. Steele said under oath in court filings in London that he had briefed Yahoo News, and this fact was reported by U.S. media in April 2017, the FBI didn’t tell the FISA court in any subsequent wiretap application.

The Grassley-Graham referral also drops the stunning news that Mr. Steele received at least some of the information for his dossier from the Obama State Department. The letter redacts the names involved. But the press is now reporting, and our sources confirm, that one of the generators of this information was none other than Sidney Blumenthal. GOP Rep. Trey Gowdy, who has seen the documents, told Fox News “that would be really warm” when asked if Mr. Blumenthal is one of the redacted names.

I suppose the FBI is behind Don, Jr meeting with someone he was explicitly told was representing the Russian government as part of an attempt by the Russian government to help Trump, said meeting where Don, Jr. was supposed to illegally obtain dirt on Hillary in order to help win a presidential election....

Whatever the merits here, the ONLY purpose of this is as a red herring is to prevent Trump from being impeached. You want heads to roll at the FBI because they fudged a warrant application? Fine. But it should not impede the investigation of Trump one iota. I find it hard to believe that Republicans care at all about this Page FISA application other than as a means to impede the Trump investigation. And if it turns out--as I believe it will--that Trump helped Russia in exchange for benefitting his own interests...then I think Republicans will or at least ought to feel ashamed that they tried to impede the Mueller investigation. Because that's what this is really about, isn't it?

Last edited by freeman3 on 08 Feb 2018, 5:32 pm, edited 1 time in total.